Conlang Random Thread

[Darren]

Animated png makes the picture harder to read

Anyway I imagine that it was intended to show the common features between glyphs rather than as a way of presenting them, so readability isn't particularly important in this case. (I might be wrong however)

[Xwtek]

Animated png makes the picture harder to read

There is no such thing as an an animated png.

My bad, I used the wrong word for that. It should be animated gif.

[KathTheDragon]

It'd be a lot easier to read if it didn't jump around so much.

[Knit Tie]

How realistic and/or believable would it be for a language to have no /l/, and yet a lateral fricative?

[Pabappa]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahgi_language seems to qualify, and Tlingit seems to have lost its /l/ recvently. Tlingit also has lateral affricates.

[Nortaneous]

How realistic and/or believable would it be for a language to have no /l/, and yet a lateral fricative?

Tlingit, Nootka, Chukchi

There are also languages with ɮ but no l, like Mongolian; this is also claimed for Dawawa and (in Colarusso's NWC Reader) Adyghe and Kabardian

[jal]

Then again, the question was "how realistic is it", and natlangs aren't a good measure of that :).


JAL

[Ares Land]

I think I need a short break from Bug stuff (though I'll promise they'll be back as soon as I figure out how they count!)

So, in the meantime, here's some Alternate Italian:

Pater noster qui ei ni cieli, sès santeficato lo ttuo nome.
Adviegna lo ttuo regno, sè ffatta la tua volonte, como en cielo e en terra
Da nnoi oggi lo nnostro pane quotidiano, e remette nnoi la detta nostra,
como noi la remettiemo i nostri dettoro; e ne noi enduce en tentazione, mai livre nnoi di malo.
Amen.

[TurkeySloth]

Then again, the question was "how realistic is it", and natlangs aren't a good measure of that .


JAL

Hence my phrasing for similar questions, generally, being about plausibility rather than naturalism, or whatever the correct word is in this case.

Speaking of, my conlang family has a hybrid volcalic root system that counts coda <l, r> as part of the vowel. Within this system, the root a-ul-u pertains to giving life. Is it plausible for speakers to separate the, likely, passive participle ahulunal into ahul and unal as names for both parent stars?

[Richard W]

Within this system, the root a-ul-u pertains to giving life. Is it plausible for speakers to separate the, likely, passive participle ahulunal into ahul and unal as names for both parent stars?

Well, there's the precedent of Kanga and Roo from kangaroo.

[bradrn]

Within this system, the root a-ul-u pertains to giving life. Is it plausible for speakers to separate the, likely, passive participle ahulunal into ahul and unal as names for both parent stars?

Well, there's the precedent of Kanga and Roo from kangaroo.

I don’t see how this is relevant to TurkeySloth’s question. As I understand it, TurkeySloth describes a scenario where e.g. ‘kanga’ and ‘roo’ have separate, individual meanings related to the concept of a ‘kangaroo’ (such as describing parts of a kangaroo).

[Man in Space]

I’ve been working on a descendant writing system for Caber. Here it is (the images are SFW; if you get an age-verification thing that’s just due to recent imgur policy).

[Richard W]

Within this system, the root a-ul-u pertains to giving life. Is it plausible for speakers to separate the, likely, passive participle ahulunal into ahul and unal as names for both parent stars?

Well, there's the precedent of Kanga and Roo from kangaroo.

I don’t see how this is relevant to TurkeySloth’s question. As I understand it, TurkeySloth describes a scenario where e.g. ‘kanga’ and ‘roo’ have separate, individual meanings related to the concept of a ‘kangaroo’ (such as describing parts of a kangaroo).

But Kanga and Roo are separate, related (mother and son) individuals!

[bradrn]

Well, there's the precedent of Kanga and Roo from kangaroo.

I don’t see how this is relevant to TurkeySloth’s question. As I understand it, TurkeySloth describes a scenario where e.g. ‘kanga’ and ‘roo’ have separate, individual meanings related to the concept of a ‘kangaroo’ (such as describing parts of a kangaroo).

But Kanga and Roo are separate, related (mother and son) individuals!

Only in Winnie-the-Pooh books. And I think we can all agree that wordplay and cutesy-ness are a big part of those books. In other words, the split into ‘Kanga’ and ‘Roo’ was deliberately created as part of the writing process — it wouldn’t necessarily be created spontaneously by a native speaker as part of normal language evolution.

I’ve been working on a descendant writing system for Caber. Here it is (the images are SFW; if you get an age-verification thing that’s just due to recent imgur policy).

Looks lovely! Do you have any sample texts?

[masako]

I’ve been working on a descendant writing system for Caber. Here it is (the images are SFW; if you get an age-verification thing that’s just due to recent imgur policy).

Exquisite. Very nicely done.

[Xwtek]

I don’t see how this is relevant to TurkeySloth’s question. As I understand it, TurkeySloth describes a scenario where e.g. ‘kanga’ and ‘roo’ have separate, individual meanings related to the concept of a ‘kangaroo’ (such as describing parts of a kangaroo).

But Kanga and Roo are separate, related (mother and son) individuals!

Only in Winnie-the-Pooh books. And I think we can all agree that wordplay and cutesy-ness are a big part of those books. In other words, the split into ‘Kanga’ and ‘Roo’ was deliberately created as part of the writing process — it wouldn’t necessarily be created spontaneously by a native speaker as part of normal language evolution.

We're talking about a star-faring civilization now. It's possible that the star is just colonized. And it people will name it spontaneously (sometimes some comedy is included). And people can give really weird name. There is a group of insect called Nops, Notnops, Tisentnops, Taintnops. There is also an asteroid called James Bond. I would not be surprised if the star is named like this xkcd comics (especially if your culture prizes humor): https://xkcd.com/1555/

[Richard W]

Only in Winnie-the-Pooh books. And I think we can all agree that wordplay and cutesy-ness are a big part of those books. In other words, the split into ‘Kanga’ and ‘Roo’ was deliberately created as part of the writing process — it wouldn’t necessarily be created spontaneously by a native speaker as part of normal language evolution.

To me, those are primarily words from those books. (My active Strine vocabulary is very limited.) And did father or son first apply those names?

The split of the participle into two words is probably more likely if the language makes a habit of forming dvanda compounds, especially for placenames.

[TurkeySloth]

I'm reconstructing Proto-Common with the help of several Wikipedia articles. Are any of the changes below, all of which happen anyways, completely odd? Mind you, the language is/was postulated to have been spoken by intergalactic ETs.

1. [*j̊ → l]
2. {*pʰ, *tʰ, *kʰ → ħ}
3. [*J → ʝ], but {*pJ, *tJ, *kJ, *ɾJ → pʰ, tʰ, kʰ, r}, which become interchangeable with [p, t, k, ɾ] due to rarity (no complete agreement on [*J], with it as [j] or [ʝ]; [ʝ] being more likely)
4. [*ʍ → t͡ʃ~d͡ʒ]

[dhok]

How realistic and/or believable would it be for a language to have no /l/, and yet a lateral fricative?

Tlingit, Nootka, Chukchi

There are also languages with ɮ but no l, like Mongolian; this is also claimed for Dawawa and (in Colarusso's NWC Reader) Adyghe and Kabardian

I can report from a seven-month sojourn in Ulaanbaatar that the Mongolian lateral is voiceless in the mouth of...basically anybody under thirty, to a first approximation.

I'm reconstructing Proto-Common with the help of several Wikipedia articles. Are any of the changes below, all of which happen anyways, completely odd? Mind you, the language is/was postulated to have been spoken by intergalactic ETs.

1. [*j̊ → l]
2. {*pʰ, *tʰ, *kʰ → ħ}
3. [*J → ʝ], but {*pJ, *tJ, *kJ, *ɾJ → pʰ, tʰ, kʰ, r}, which become interchangeable with [p, t, k, ɾ] due to rarity (no complete agreement on [*J], with it as [j] or [ʝ]; [ʝ] being more likely)
4. [*ʍ → t͡ʃ~d͡ʒ]

1) would need some sort of intermediate, perhaps /ç/.
Any one of 2) is perfectly believable--aspirates become /h/ (or something similar) all the time--but a full-scale collapse seems a bit less believable. Could maybe do *kʰ > ħ, *pʰ *tʰ > h.
On 3), I vaguely recall some Southeast Asian language getting aspirates out of Cr or maybe Cl clusters--Nort would know more. Interchangeability with the lenis stops is...just a merger? Perfectly workable.
4) looks probably impossible in a single step, I'm afraid. However, Arapaho and Cheyenne had *w > j, and then you're just fortiting /j/. This might require a merger of *w *ʍ *j, however.

[TurkeySloth]

I'm reconstructing Proto-Common with the help of several Wikipedia articles. Are any of the changes below, all of which happen anyways, completely odd? Mind you, the language is/was postulated to have been spoken by intergalactic ETs.

1. [*j̊ → l]
2. {*pʰ, *tʰ, *kʰ → ħ}
3. [*J → ʝ], but {*pJ, *tJ, *kJ, *ɾJ → pʰ, tʰ, kʰ, r}, which become interchangeable with [p, t, k, ɾ] due to rarity (no complete agreement on [*J], with it as [j] or [ʝ]; [ʝ] being more likely)
4. [*ʍ → t͡ʃ~d͡ʒ]

1) would need some sort of intermediate, perhaps /ç/.
Any one of 2) is perfectly believable--aspirates become /h/ (or something similar) all the time--but a full-scale collapse seems a bit less believable. Could maybe do *kʰ > ħ, *pʰ *tʰ > h.
On 3), I vaguely recall some Southeast Asian language getting aspirates out of Cr or maybe Cl clusters--Nort would know more. Interchangeability with the lenis stops is...just a merger? Perfectly workable.
4) looks probably impossible in a single step, I'm afraid. However, Arapaho and Cheyenne had *w > j, and then you're just fortiting /j/. This might require a merger of *w *ʍ *j, however.

One was, originally, [*h → l], with a true fricative [*h], but I didn't like the distance. [*j̊] could've been an intermediary there.

Two results from a collapse similar to yours and a merger of the two into the pharyngeal.

I'll wait on Nort's input about three before messing with it.

Four's [*ʍ] is equivalent to IPA [*xʷ]. But, they transcribe it with the single character because [x] didn't exist at the time. Thus, the full IPA transcription is [*xʷ → t͡ʃʷ~d͡ʒʷ], with the results having extremely weak or no labialization because the labialization's only occurrence fronted the velar. But, that's still likely to need [*j~*ɥ]. Effectively, the h-sound pairing was [*xʷ, *h] before I made [*h] into [*j̊]